This has actually been a relatively quiet month for me gamewise. I've been tired and I spent a LOT of time midmonth playing demos for nextfest (many of which were very good!). But I still fit some normal games in between the rest!
- Pentiment: I didn't actually play this myself (I watched @dog play it) but holy crap, what an incredible game. I think this is going to live in my brain permanently alongside other favs like disco elysium, ace attorney, hypnospace and the like. Incredibly interesting take on a choice-heavy narrative game that is so aware of its contemporaries and where the genre is right now and does really fun things with it. Hugely charming cast of characters. A deep love of historically accurate esoterica. Wonderful. Wonderful game.
- Melvor Idle: I'm verging on a relapse into idle game depression land but Melvor is so slow and methodical and interesting that it's holding me back. just playing melvor and no other idle games is pretty satisfying as long as I can find other things to do. It's a game that truly demands you idle it for most of its playtime and that's maybe the ideal. Any more active and I start falling into the sad skinner box hole. Thank you melvor idle
- Elden Ring: I got successfully peer pressured back into this by zandra. It's still elden ring. It's still like 5x more game than I suspect I'll ever finish. I can at least appreciate that it's willing to let my blood slash dagger build be incredibly broken even after years of patches so that I don't have to work TOO hard, unlike most souls games. Thanks fromsoft. Thumsoft.
- A Ton Of Puzzle Games: Specifically, Linelith, Liquidum, Magicube, and Leaf's Odyssey. They're fun! I don't get into puzzle games hard that often so this is kind of refreshing. The quality varies a lot (I think liquidum is kind of too obtuse while Leaf's Odyssey is wonderful and so hard it may well defeat me) but they've been good timekillers.
- DROD: I'm getting slowly back into this. What a classic. Christ. Like I'm constantly in awe of how simple, smart, and interesting the DROD series is. Hoping to put some real time in and clear them all eventually.
- Rabbit and Steel: I can't actually decide if i like this game or just think it's a solid take on a mid premise. It doesn't do anything wrong, but the fundamental problem is that aspiring to be MMO raiding kind of puts a cap on what you can do that's interesting or novel, and by and large it seems to me like it's mostly content to mimic rather than to surpass. That's fine, but it makes it a game I'm not too inclined to stick with. I already have an FF14 subscription!
- Elin: This game's in beta and I kickstarted it. The series is as capital-P Problematic as ever and I don't think it'd be to most people's tastes but I cannot resist its almost dwarf-fortress-as-outsider-art take on roguelikes and procedural generation. It's so fucking weird and I love that. I love weird systems games. They're so much harder to make interesting than they look.
- Bombe: I put a bit more time into this. It requires so much focus I can't marathon it for long anymore, but god, what a satisfying game that got me to spend 3 hours down a hole searching "set theory" terms on wikipedia and reading tons of equations i will never ever understand
- Games I started playing and then stopped after like an hour because I'm too distractable: Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series, Whisker Squadron, Fae Tactics
